Dad gets a job as an electrician in a barite mine. He comes home early on this new shift, so he plays games with his kids all afternoon. One of the most memorable is called Ergo, a game in which he makes two statements of fact, and the kids have to answer a question based on those statements or else say, Insufficient information to draw a conclusion, and explain why. It's a fantastic way of teaching his kids how to analyze and come to specific conclusions about information. Another activity they all do together is to explore the desert, although it's most often just Brian and Jeannette alone. This is where Jeannette begins her rock collection.
Another attraction for them is the Owl Club, a restaurant that has slot machines to use while waiting for your dinner. Dad warns the kids that only fools play the slots. Statistically, they're set so most people lose. When he gambles, he prefers poker and pool, games of skill, not chance. Everyone in the restaurant knows Dad, especially the men who sit around drinking beer and smoking. Ironically, the waitresses are very impressed with how mannerly the children are. Dad always exclaims that they're damn smart, too. They always leave this restaurant stuffed and waddle home.
The mine where Dad works has a commissary and that's where the family shops for their groceries. The cost is taken directly out of Dad's check. They buy so much food that one time Dad owes the company eleven cents! Mom refuses to buy convenience or packaged food saying that people who do are brainwashed by advertising. Of course, she doesn't like to cook, so she uses the basics she buys to makes huge pots of certain foods and then they eat that same meal all week long, three times a day.
What's nice about this new town and home is that Dad rarely goes out
drinking. Instead, he stays home and they read aloud, consulting a dictionary
in the middle of the floor when they don't know a word. If they don't
agree with a definition, they write and write to the dictionary publisher
until the publisher just stops responding. Dad likes to have the last
word. Mom reads everything especially the classics, but she admits to
a weakness for James Michener. Brian likes adventure books, like Zane
Grey, and Lori likes the Oz books. As for Jeannette, her favorites are
Laura Ingalls Wilder stories, but her especial favorite is Black Beauty.
They all become so involved in their reading that the shaking and
rattling of the windows and doors when a train goes by can no longer even
be heard by any of them.
This section reinforces how diligent and concerned Rex and Rose Mary
are about their children's education. It is an extreme contrast to how
the neglect them in other ways.
The children are enrolled in elementary school and their teacher is Miss Page, a small woman given to sudden rages and severe thrashings with her ruler. Most of what she teaches Jeannette has already learned from Mom and Dad, and because she wants to make friends, she doesn't raise her hand or offer any answers. Dad accuses her of coasting and makes her do her arithmetic in binary numbers instead of Arabic numbers. It makes Miss Page angry, and she makes Jeannette stay after school to do her homework correctly. Jeannette doesn't tell Dad, because she doesn't want him to go to school and debate Miss Page.
Their neighborhood is known as The Tracks and lots of kids live there. What is most important to these kids is who can run the fastest and whose Daddy isn't a wimp. Dad is definitely not a wimp and comes out and plays with the kids in all their games. He is so well liked that kids come to the door and ask, Can your dad come out and play? Furthermore, Mom and Dad allow their children to go just about anywhere they want. They don't burden them with a lot of rules and restrictions - they only have to come home when the streetlights come on and are warned to use common sense. Mom also doesn't believe in coddling her children. Once Jeannette rips her thigh open on a nail, but Mom refuses to take her to the hospital. She says that we've become a nation of sissies, and after bandaging the wound, she sends Jeannette back out to play.
Jeannette continues to collect rocks and even makes necklaces for her mother out of them. Once she brings home what she thinks are nuggets of gold. It's only fools gold. Her favorite rocks are geodes that Mom says come from volcanoes. She stores all her rocks out by Mom's piano, and she and Brian often use them to decorate the grave of their pets or wild animals they find dead. She also holds rock sales, but as Dad says, her inventory might move faster if she lowers her prices. She is asking hundreds of dollars for each one, because to her, they are incredibly valuable, and she'd rather keep them than sell them for less that they are worth.
Another place where Jeannette and Brian love to go is the dump. They
find incredible items there that fascinate them both. They even wander
through the toxic and hazard wastes corner of the dump. One day, they
mix together all different kinds of chemicals, which Brian calls nuclear
fuel, and they throw in a match. They are knocked to their feet and the
walls of the shack where they have mixed their brew catch on fire. Jeannette
yells that they have to get out, but Brian keeps trying to put the fire
out. Ironically, Dad happens to be walking home from work at the time
and gets them both out. He isn't angry at all; just amazed at the coincidence
of him being so close when his children needed him. He points to the top
of the fire where the flames dissolve into an invisible shimmering heat
that makes the desert waver like a mirage. He calls it the zone known
in physics as the boundary between turbulence and order. Dad says, It's
a place where no rules apply, or at least they haven't figured em out
yet. You-all got a little too close to it today.
This section emphasizes how unattended Jeannette's childhood was. Her parents allowed her and brother and sisters to run wild essentially with no rules. They were frequently hurt or doing dangerous things as a result. They seemed to be sitting in the arms of Lady Luck or else they are challenging the boundary between order and turbulence. Ironically, Dad understands how close they came to that boundary, but doesn't have the inclination to make their lives safer.
Clapsaddle, Diane. "TheBestNotes on A Long Way Gone".
TheBestNotes.com.
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